


Narcissus Denied

by Triss_Hawkeye



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Chess, Finch and Elias Board Game Club, Harold's Steadfast Moral Compass, Hubris, Kissing, M/M, Mind Games, Rejection, Season/Series 05, complicated feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 03:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14728808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triss_Hawkeye/pseuds/Triss_Hawkeye
Summary: Elias played to his vanity, and Harold knew it.Set during season 5, leading up towards 5x09.





	Narcissus Denied

The safe house had played temporary home to the widest range of people over the years, from innocent to devious. This felt different, somehow. More permanent, for one thing. This particular occupant could not leave without his life being in danger, and that was something that they would not be able to make go away within the next day or so, like most cases. And rather unexpected - yet at the same time, something about it felt inevitable. As if the sleeping occupant of the hospital bed crammed into the corner had slowly and imperceptibly made his way into the inner circle of the one watching him. Harold sat, and wondered just how it had happened.

He watched, and kept watching until the sleeper opened his eyes. Carl Elias’ gaze flickered around the room, taking stock of the situation, before resting upon him with an entranced look on his face.

“Hello, Harold. It’s a rather nice surprise to see you.”

\---

The safe house was safe, of course, by necessity, but now necessity dictated even stricter standards, and Harold spent several days revamping his systems, ducking in and out of the place with the briefest acknowledgement of its recovering occupant. Elias’ presence unnerved him - and not so much because he was afraid of Elias being there, but rather because he found he didn’t mind it as much as he thought he would. Elias was a dangerous man, but a known quantity all the same. And their interactions were nothing but cordial these days.

“Do you have some time, Harold?” Elias asked, one day.

Harold shuffled around from the electronics box in the wall. “I suppose I do, although I still have some research to do a little later. What can I do for you, Mr Elias? Do you need more groceries?”

Elias shook his head with an amiable smile. “I am sufficiently provided for, thank you. No, I simply found myself missing our little chess sessions. I don’t suppose you have time for a game?”

Harold raised his eyebrows. “Well, why not. Let me just finish this, I won’t be long.”

By the time Harold had completed his modifications to the security system, Elias had relocated from the hospital bed to the dining table, a chess board set up in front of him. Harold noted that he had never told Elias where it had been located - or indeed that there had been one in the safe house to begin with. Elias had searched the place thoroughly in his absence, injury notwithstanding, and was affording him the courtesy of knowing he had done so. He supposed he couldn’t resent that, although he made a mental note to check on the status of both the nice whiskey and the firearms later.

“You look good, Harold,” Elias said as he made his way over to join him.

“As do you,” he replied, only mildly perturbed at this point at how friendly Elias could be when he wanted to be. “I’m glad to see you seem to be recovering well.”

“All thanks to you and yours.”

Harold sat down carefully opposite his opponent and, seeing that Elias had offered him the white pieces, made the first move. Elias leaned in, making his own opening with an expression that bordered on glee. 

“Admit it,” he said, as Harold considered for a moment, then advanced a pawn. “You’ve missed this too.”

Harold made an amused noise of concession. “Our encounters were always rather illuminating.” The boss’ smile widened. 

It was no lie. One’s best chess could be played when distractions were minimal, but to his pleasure Harold had found that both of them would much rather enjoy conversation over a game than play in silence. Aside from their terse and guarded exchanges of information, Elias liked to talk philosophy - the prison chess matches taking on a doubled nature of game and debate. He also shared an appreciation for literature and the arts. Harold would find himself talking about things he had picked up and read in the library during a lull in his day. Over the week, those moments that he noticed something and wished so desperately that he could share it with Grace, he instead brought to the prison. The criminal’s crocodile smile was no replacement for Grace’s, but Harold didn’t need to be in love - he needed to be understood by someone. And, for better or worse, he and Elias understood one another.

He found himself wondering from time to time, in those moments when Elias’ voice was light and good-humoured, whether Elias was a sort of reflection of himself. The sort of person he could have become, had he chosen another path, hidden at the centre of a very different web of influence and information. 

He wondered it again now, the two of them sat across from each other looking like nothing more than the pair of schoolteachers they were in other lives. Two aging men in glasses and sharp suits, chatting like old friends over a game. Two minds alike in brilliance, seeking to outwit each other in a match on multiple levels. 

“And then I shot him, of course.” Elias’ face stretched into a shark grin at his own off-hand comment to finish the anecdote as he swept his bishop across the board and took one of Harold’s pawns. Harold broke the symmetry and refused to smile back, meeting Elias with a stony expression. If they were indeed a mirror image of each other, he would only let the reflection go so far, and no further.

Elias was unoffended at Harold’s refusal to share his mirth - if anything, he seemed even more delighted. “Ah, Harold,” he sighed, as the other man quietly studied the game board and carefully moved a rook. “You’re allowed to crack a smile.”

“No I’m not,” came his reply, and it sounded a little prim to his own ears, but it needed saying. Some lines needed to be kept sharp and well-defined. He lifted his eyes again to fix Elias with a stern look. “I wouldn’t ever want to give the impression that I approve.”

“Even if he had it coming?” Elias shot back playfully.

Harold simply raised his eyebrows slightly in reply and turned his gaze back to the chessboard. He let a quiet minute pass, interrupted only by the quiet tap of moving pieces, before he offered an olive branch to rekindle the conversation. “I trust that you’ve been finding enough here to keep yourself occupied?” he asked, indicating the apartment that he was absolutely certain Elias had combed every inch of already.

“I have! You have a rather nice selection of books here, Harold…” And so it went on.

\---

Elias played to his vanity, and Harold knew it.

He could afford to dress well, so he did. And he didn’t consider himself a particularly handsome man, but he appreciated how good tailoring counteracted where age and disability had softened his figure. He was meticulous in his appearance, out of a sense that it was proper more than anything else, but he did enjoy how he looked, and enjoyed it even more when it was noticed. A fact that Elias had certainly picked up on. Harold found himself smiling whenever he was complimented, even though he could practically smell the manipulation behind it. But Elias noticed the details no one else did, or else was the only one to make sure that Harold knew he appreciated the small things - like the cufflinks he’d chosen that morning, or some intricacy of the suit fabric.

More than compliments on the physical, though, and more subtle and pervasive, were the compliments on the intellectual. And here Elias wasn’t so blatant in laying on praise, but rather invited Harold to join him in a world inhabited only by the two of them. “But not so for men like us,” he said, fixing him with a gaze of hawk-like intensity. I know you, it said. You and me are the same. “We are the ones who hold the world in the palm of our hands.” We’re special. _You’re_ special. There is no one else capable of doing the things that we can, and that is something to take pride in. Knight takes bishop.

“All the more reason for us to be careful with it, then,” came Harold’s testy reply. Pawn takes knight.

Elias’ smile then was not that of a predator, but rather softer. Affectionate. “Right now, I don’t think there’s anyone in the world I’d trust more than you to take care of it,” he said, the crow’s feet around his eyes creasing warmly as he advanced a rook. The effect was transformative, and the corners of Harold’s mouth twitched up in response, even as he knew that this was Elias at his most dangerous. “Check,” the mob boss said, charming in his aggression.

For being the linchpins of a game of chess, it was easy to underestimate kings. They remained hidden in the shadows for much of play, their subordinates doing business on their behalf. Their movement was limited to a slow hobble, and exposure left them vulnerable. But their weapons were as sharp as any other piece’s. White king takes rook, and clears a path for his queen. “Check. Right back at you.”

Elias beamed, and Harold allowed himself to reflect his pleasure. But he could not afford to let his guard down. The black king had his own motives in luring out his counterpart in white. Harold just had to figure out why. 

\---

“Despite being good at chess, I’ll admit I’m not overly fond of it.” Harold entered the safe house with a package under one arm that day, and Elias was drawn over to the table by curiosity as he set up a different board in black and white. He glanced up with impish challenge in his voice. “Tell me, Mr Elias, have you ever played Othello?”

“Not in years,” Elias replied, seeming surprised but by no means displeased by this development. 

“Me neither, if that’s any comfort,” Harold replied, inviting him to take a seat. “Please. Black first.”

Elias placed a black counter and flipped one of the centre white pieces over, revealing its black side. “I knew it as Reversi, but I’ll give it a pass for the reference to Shakespeare,” he mused, prompting an amused scoff from Harold. 

“I like how counterintuitive the strategy for this game is,” Harold said, making his own move and flipping a trapped black piece back to white. “It’s better to make minimal gains at the beginning, focussing on solidifying your position rather than capturing a lot of pieces. And it’s also possible to win from what looks at first glance like an enormous disadvantage. The more sprawling you are, the fewer opportunities you present yourself.”

His opponent smirked at him. “I can see why you like it.”

Harold quirked his face as if to say, “You have no idea,” although Elias certainly had a better idea than most of the threat that the all-consuming Samaritan posed. Harold wondered how much of his own operation Elias had managed to figure out. Especially after their years of encounters and his weeks quietly holed up in the safe house, perfecting the art of reading a book while pretending he wasn’t listening to anything that was going on around him.

“ _I_ like that this game is about converting, rather than killing,” Elias continued. “It’s always important to know exactly what might cause someone to flip and betray you… and exactly what pressure to exert to flip them back.” He gave a dramatic sigh and turned a row of pieces over to black. “A lesson I’m afraid I learned all too well after coming head to head with the Brotherhood.” He bared his teeth in a wolfish not-quite-grin and for a moment the affable boss was replaced by the ruthless manipulator triumphant, the man who had turned Dominic against his right hand man in a perfect act of vengeance. His voice took on a bitter, vicious sort of glee, and it wasn’t too hard to guess the memory he was replaying. “The reference to Othello is an apt one. True loyalty is so _hard_ to find these days… That’s what I like about you, Harold.”

Harold looked up, surprised and wary at being the subject of the segue.

Elias’ voice was soft again and he was leaning forward, almost earnest. “Some people talk big talk about loyalty, but they’ll bend every rule they have if you offer them enough - or threaten to take enough away from them. Not you, Harold. You’re a corner piece.” He tapped the white counter in the corner of the board, an early victory of Harold’s. “You’re consistent. Can’t be flipped. I respect that a lot.”

The both of us are corner pieces - or rather, you would like that, if it were true, Harold thought, but didn’t say. Two men absolute in who they were, mirror images, safe and unchanging. A part of him would like that too, he realised. But for a long time he had battled the hubris that lurked at every turn as his most feared enemy - the one that would turn him into the very thing he fought against, if given a foothold. The one that Elias would feed every chance he got, advertently or otherwise. Harold Finch could not afford to think of himself as any better or more valuable than any other human being, no matter how much his riches and brilliance and satisfaction with his own integrity might tempt him otherwise. It would go against everything he believed in.

“I’m afraid that’s where you’re wrong, Elias,” he replied stiffly. “I’m not perfect. I’m as human as anyone else.”

Elias cocked his head, his face a picture of innocent curiosity, every bit as charming and inviting as he was capable of. Had this been his goal all along? To induce Harold into revealing his weaknesses?

Harold broke off eye contact and studied the board again, analysing his next move. He trained his face back to stone. Weaknesses he had, plenty, but here was not the place to reveal them.

\---

It wasn’t always the case that Harold had time for a game when he stopped by the safe house.

“Can’t stay long. Just checking in.”

Elias would nod, smile, sometimes exchange a friendly greeting, but often simply return to the book he would inevitably be reading, while Harold opened a laptop and squeezed in some research for a few minutes before heading back out on his way.

It wasn’t entirely necessary for him to visit the safe house as much as he did, once he’d finished upgrading the security, and aside from the occasional grocery run which was just as easily delegated to John or Detective Fusco. But he found it more pleasant here than in the subway. Not that the subway was particularly unpleasant any more - he had put a lot of work into cleaning the place and making it comfortable - but when John was out working a number and Miss Groves away playing another part somewhere, being alone except for the mechanical roar of the Machine and the dread-inducing contents of the simulation inside the Faraday cage was enough to give anyone an existential crisis. Even with Bear around. It was his own burden to carry, of course, but half an hour snatched here and there in the safe house made him feel a little more at ease. He’d never usually been one to seek out much human company, but Elias offered exactly the right kind - another presence in the room, quiet and still and doing his own thing, but present all the same.

He let out a quiet sigh after he’d finished scrolling through the financial records of their latest number, having found nothing particularly suspicious or noteworthy. He’d have to take a deeper look at what was going on in their social media, but he’d probably return to the subway for that. He rubbed his eyes under his glasses and weighed up whether to make a stop to pick up some tea first when Elias’ voice carried soft across the room. “You all right, Harold?”

He glanced up to see the criminal sat on the sofa, comfortably so but leant forward in attention. His book lay closed on the coffee table, and Harold suddenly wondered how long he had sat there, just watching him.

“Oh I’m all right,” he said quickly in reply, though he wasn’t sure that he was. “What about you, Mr Elias? I’m sorry, you must feel awfully cooped up in here.”

Elias shrugged. “I know it’s for good reason, Harold, don’t blame yourself. I should be thanking you. Somehow, you and your operation managed to save my life once again. In fact, I was just thinking…” He pushed himself off the sofa and meandered towards where Harold was sat at the dining table, hands tucked into his pockets. “...about that game of Othello the other day. The pieces turning from black to white to black again.” He sat against the edge of the table beside Harold, who twisted slightly to look up at him. “It reminded me of us, you know? You and John stand between me and certain death, and just when I think I’ve managed to pay you back in information and favours, enough to gain some leverage over you, you go and do it over again. And again.” He gave a soft laugh. “I can barely keep up with you, Harold. I don’t know if I’ll ever not be in your debt. But somehow, I don’t even mind.”

Harold’s mouth was dry. Elias’ voice had taken on a rare tenderness and he was suddenly aware of how close the man was sitting, leaned in slightly towards him, deep brown eyes locked with his own pale ones. He opened his mouth to speak, “Carl…” and trailed off, finding himself without the words to say. Elias found them for him. 

“I find myself with such a deep affection for you, Harold.” And he closed the distance between them, pausing for a second before pressing his lips to Harold’s, fingers brushing along his jaw before gently cupping the back of his head. Harold leaned in and not away.

Oh, you fool, was the first thing Harold thought to himself. You love him.

The second thing he thought was that it was perfectly natural for the body to respond to physical intimacy, regardless of what feelings may or may not be present, especially having been starved of such intimacy for so long. His racing heart and the warmth in his face surely meant nothing more than that.

The third thing: was this what Elias had wanted from Harold all this time? His love?

The fourth - he could fall in love with this man, and right now it felt as if every nerve in his body was telling him to. Oh, but that wasn’t true. Not with the man who would casually talk of car bombs like they were nothing but a postcard. The man who treated killing so matter-of-factly, as a messy but unavoidable part of business as usual. The man who had told him the other day of how he’d watched Simmons die at his command, all the time with a grim look of satisfaction on his face, a thumb absently stroking the scar across his palm. Harold couldn’t allow himself to be anything but stone towards that man when he showed himself - to be otherwise would be to start down a path he utterly refused to tread upon.

But he could fall in love - he realised he had been falling - with the spaces in between, when Carl Elias was the witty and well-read school teacher, his chess partner, his confidante. The Elias he respected as a leader and a strategist. The Elias who was a friend, astonishingly full of kind words and generosity for those in his favour. Oh, it was vanity, vanity. He could only love the parts of Elias that were like himself. 

He took a shuddering breath through parted lips but couldn’t move away. He placed his hand in the warmth of the crook between Elias’ shoulder and neck, and received a pleased hum in response.

Ah, and what did Elias want? Even now he would be thinking several moves ahead, and it would be foolish not to do the same. What move would he make once he had Harold in his arms, or in his bed, laid open and vulnerable? What advantage would he take at the first sign of weakness? How many moves would it be before returning his affection turned Harold into another one of the pieces in a long game of his own?

But it wouldn’t, he thought. If this isn’t genuine, if Elias truly wanted to play that game against me, _I would win_.

That was the thought that finished it. With a final breath he braced himself and pulled away, leaning back in his chair, eyes downcast.

In chess, a king cannot stand beside its opposing king. To be in such a position would be to grant the opponent victory. This wasn’t a move he could allow himself to make. He could not be so proud as to think that the rules would not apply to him. It would put him in too much danger - if not from Elias, then from himself. 

“I’m sorry, Mr Elias,” he breathed, carefully placing formality between them once more. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the affection. But… this is not a currency I can accept.” He patted the other man's shoulder once, before returning his hand to his lap.

Elias nodded slowly, seriously. For moment his eyes scanned across Harold’s face, performing an analysis of his own. “I understand, Harold,” he said eventually, and Harold was strangely certain that he did. 

Elias’ shrug was resigned but unoffended as he leaned back with a rueful smile. “You just let me know if you change your mind.” He reached out and squeezed Harold’s shoulder, before lifting himself off the table and wandering back over to the living area, where he sat back down and picked up his book as casually as if nothing had happened.

Harold watched him a little longer, heart still thundering in his chest, wondering if in the lines of Elias’ frown as he read he could see a shade of dejection he hadn’t seen before. He immediately wished that he could take it all back, rewind and find a move that could give them both what they wanted. But his rules stood around him still, like glass walls he found himself hammering against even as they froze him to his chair. They had held strong this long, but some dark, secret part of him that he had never wanted to acknowledge wondered how long, and what it would take, before those walls cracked beneath his fists. In his mind’s eye, that ruthless side of him stopped hammering for a moment and turned his head to look back at him, face filled with rage and desire. 

The face he wore belonged to Elias. 

Rattled, Harold snapped the laptop closed and bolted from the safe house, and avoided the eyes of every reflection until he made it back to the subway.

**Author's Note:**

> This is peak typical me - get into a new fandom and go straight for the rarepairs. Let me know what you think!


End file.
